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Blade Runner and Mad Max are back, so why not The Matrix? The Hollywood Reporter says sources have confirmed that Warner Bros is starting work on a reboot of The Matrix, and it even has a star in mind: Michael B. Jordan, who recently broke out as the star of Creed. Zak Penn (Alphas, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Incredible Hulk) is currently writing a treatment.
The Matrix was not expected to be a blockbuster when Warners released it in March 1999. At the time, writer/director siblings the Wachowskis were best known for an indie film noir called Bound about lesbian lovers plotting the ultimate crime. But the innovative camera effects (bullet time!) and futuristic originality of The Matrix blew audiences away, rocketing it to the fourth-highest box office on Earth that year. Who could forget badass Laurence Fishburne as Morpheus, offering the blue and red pills, or Carrie Ann Moss as Trinity, using nmap when she wasn't doing gun ballet. And then there was Keanu Reeves as Neo, downloading data over his brain port and intoning gravely, "I know kung-fu."
Though the sequels never lived up to the promise of the first film, the franchise was a game changer, influencing science fiction to this day. Everything from Inception to Mr. Robot owes something to the style and themes that the Wachowskis popularized. Plus, bullet time has forever left its mark on action scenes, both technologically and stylistically. Any time you see a fight scene that moves between fast and slow motion, viewed in 360 degrees, you are looking at a special effect that the Wachowskis invented.
Don't think you can. Know you can.
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:02PM (4 children)
None of it is entirely original, I mean... the Matrix borrows from Shadowrun, Shadowrun borrows from D&D, D&D borrows from Lord of the Rings, Lord of the Rings borrows from The Worm Ouroboros... it's standing on the shoulders of giants all the way down. Well it's more like pyramids of giants I guess. Point is, Hero's Journey stories and so forth, all the way back to Gilgamesh and further back still than anyone remembers. This does not, alone, mean they're any less valuable.
It's a little early for a remake though. It's not really THAT old. What could they add or do different that would make it worth it? What new angle, what new facet could they bring out of the story? Technology and society have advanced, but not so much that we'd tell a substantially different story, I think (besides perhaps fixing some trivial technical mistakes). "Expanding" the story did not really go well last time, as the sequels showed.
They might as well just re-release the original Matrix for another theater run in Super Ultimate HD or something. It'd probably do okay and cost a lot less.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @09:16PM
None of it is entirely original,
Well, it was pretty original for a movie.
What could they add or do different that would make it worth it?
They could dump that stupid idea of using people's bodies as batteries and replace it with using people's brains as one gigantic distributed, biological computer. Then they could go all rosicrucian.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @12:05PM (2 children)
"What if... guys guys.. what if, get this, what if Neo... is a woman"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 17 2017, @04:03PM (1 child)
Carrie-Ann Moss's character was already way more competent than Neo.
Other than this magical 'destiny' he had for unexplained reasons, she could have done everything he did and more.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday March 17 2017, @04:25PM